Thursday, December 29, 2016

I was so excited to finally have a chance to visit Burgundy, one of the world’s top wine regions. I spent a couple of hours in Nuit St. Georges, one of the many wine villages near Dijon, and finally understood how intermingled fields and dwellings are. You walk across the bridge and you're in the fields. The warehouses are in the town itself.

I knew that the best Burgundy wine comes from the slopes, rather than the flat fields below, and the distinction was obvious.

I visited the Cassissium to find out how liqueur de cassis (black currant), another local beverage, is made. The tasting was informative. There is a cheaper version that is less alcoholic, but it tastes mostly of sugar. The higher-alcohol, higher-quality version contains more fruit, which really improves the flavour. It’s definitely worth paying a little more for the better-quality product.

Ostentatious Orange
For a limited time only, Nvigorate (Saskatoon Farmers’ Market) is offering Seabuckthorn Gelato with a chocolate swirl.

We’re Fooling Ourselves
There are some major psychological barriers to preventing food waste. For example, we don’t like an empty refrigerator or an empty shopping cart. And we may inspect prices carefully when shopping, but we’re nowhere near as price conscious when we’re cleaning out the refrigerator. “We so often say, ‘What do I want for dinner?’ as opposed to, ‘What do I have for dinner?’ . . . I think we need to reframe the way we think about what we have in our fridges and pantries.”

Flavourful Saskatoon is a weekly Monday feature. I also post articles about food that is good, clean and fair; travel; and books. You may also enjoy EcoFriendly Sask profiling Saskatchewan environmental initiatives and events.

You can follow Wanderlust and Words on Facebook, Twitter, or by email (top right corner).

The Local Kitchen YXE
I’m looking forward to hearing more about The Local Kitchen, which is just getting off the ground in Saskatoon. The three women who have set it up say their vision is to “support food-focused entrepreneurs in developing, operating, and growing successful businesses to enhance the local food industry; while simultaneously providing a fun, fresh and welcoming environment, where members of the community can engage with their local food system through workshops, cooking classes, and retail.” They plan to rent out 3 commercial kitchens and offer classes and events.

New Brunswick Kitchen Party, May 10-14
You’re invited to a kitchen party in New Brunswick when Slow Food Canada holds its annual meeting in southeast New Brunswick, May 10-14, 2017.

Syrian Refugees and Food Food can play a vital role in helping refugees preserve their culture. But it also has limitations; for example, canning and preserving aren’t part of their lives as refugees: “Making pickles is a statement of settlement, it embodies the idea of a future of planning and looking forward: in six months, we will be here, in the same place. ‘We just live day to day,’ one of the women said. “’We buy what we need and we eat it.”

Food TrendsMillennials are favouring fresh food, minimally processed, that’s easy to prepare – and that’s changing the way industry operates. For example, retailers are selling more fresh food, making their stores smaller, and offering more meal kit options. But it’s not working: “millennials are turning to smaller companies that they feel are more in line with their values of sustainability and ‘real’ food . . . . What big brands should be doing, says Taparia, is taking the long view and launching fresh food under new brand names. ‘It would take a lot of investment and work,’ he says, ‘but they have to think big, otherwise they’ll face annihilation in 10 years.”

Flavourful Saskatoon is a weekly Monday feature. I also post articles about food that is good, clean and fair; travel; and books. You may also enjoy EcoFriendly Sask profiling Saskatchewan environmental initiatives and events.

You can follow Wanderlust and Words on Facebook, Twitter, or by email (top right corner).